Report warned of HealthCare.gov flaws last spring

The administration was warned last spring that its website didn’t meet key requirements for a successful rollout, including relying too heavily on outside contractors, according to a copy of a “Red Team” report prepared for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and obtained by POLITICO.

The report, which was delivered at the end of March, identified six tests that the developing healthcare.gov website didn’t meet: Its needs were evolving, rather than clearly articulated; there was no clear definition of success; the program relied too heavily contractors and other outside parties; the design, build and test phases were stacked on top of each other rather than sequential, there wasn’t enough time allotted or a side enough scope for valid end-to-end testing of the system; and the site was expected to launch at full volume rather than phasing in over time.

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The revelations of early warning signs, first reported by the Washington Post, are not the only ones to have been unearthed in the ongoing autopsy of the Obamacare rollout, but the previously undisclosed CMS “Red Team” report shows just how early and how specifically administration officials were notified about problems that ultimately plagued the website. In this case, the report, compiled by an outside consulting firm and provided by a source on Capitol Hill, pointed to issues that remained unresolved when the website launched six months later.

White House officials said that while the report hasn’t previously been disclosed, administration officials have been clear in the past in acknowledging that red flags were raised.

“As we have said many times now and as has been frequently reported, flags were definitely raised throughout the development of the website, as would be the case for any IT project this complex,” said White House spokesman Eric Schultz. “Those issues, including the ones from 6-months before launch, were, in turn taken-up by the development team housed at CMS. But nobody anticipated the size and scope of the problems we experienced once the site launched. Since that time, experts have been working night and day to get it functioning – and that is where our focus is, and should be, right now.”

CMS played down the significance of the report on Monday night, contending that the agency took remedial action to address the problems.

“In early 2013, as part of a standard process to identify potential risks and develop mitigating strategies, an independent contractor was brought in to conduct an external review. The review was completed six months before the beginning of open enrollment, was in line with industry best practices, and was followed by concrete action to address potential risks—as was intended,” CMS said in a statement. “As we have said, CMS has continually evaluated progress and has taken steps to prioritize and address concerns, and mitigate risks.”

CMS officials pointed to specific steps that were taken after the private report was rendered. The agency released a rule on income verification on July 5, prioritized the functionality of the website and outreach to healthy young adults — who form the bedrock of the financing system for the exchanges — and added more resources to deliver in-person assistance to enrollees, according to the agency.

CMS also announced in April that the Health and Human Services Department would pump about $800 million from existing accounts into implementing the law, the officials said, and released guidance on specific issues in May and July.

Still, the report accurately predicted many of the factors that contributed to the website’s failed rollout.

The key risks, according to the document, included: “Marketplaces unavailable with system failure; long manual processing times; failure to resolve post-launch issues rapidly; no viable marketplace in large-volume…states; plans not approved and loaded in selected markets. … [and] lack of end-to-end operational view of interdependencies.”

The idea of delaying the launch was moot, though, according to the report.

“The working group determined that extending the go-live date should not be part of the analysis and therefore worked within a boundary condition of Oct. 1 as the launch date,” the authors wrote.